WASHINGTON — At the first whiff of editorial buckshot from the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Charles Rangel is heading for the hills — at least on the topic of taxes.

Only a few days ago, the ranking minority member of House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee told Congress Daily that he would consider raising taxes if the Democrats gain control of the House in November and he becomes the committee chairman. Mr. Rangel indicated that he would consider tax increases across the spectrum, Congress Daily quoted him as saying. He told Bloomberg News he couldn’t think of a single first term Bush tax cut worth saving.

This prompted the Journal to issue an editorial yesterday reprising his quotations and congratulating the New York Democrat, saying voters wouldn’t be able to say they weren’t warned. But yesterday, in an interview with The New York Sun, Mr. Rangel retreated with alacrity. Asked about the Journal editorial in a telephone interview, Mr. Rangel said it was too soon to discuss any tax hikes or tax cuts. Instead, he said that were he to assume the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee, he would look to host a retreat with Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his predecessors, Robert Rubin, to discuss a bipartisan approach to tax policy.

While he told the Sun that he had not read the editorial, Mr. Rangel said the Journal’s piece was “cheapening.” As for his interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Rangel said, “The only question that came up was the alternative minimum tax and tax reform. I said, ‘If we are going to deal with it, everything would have to be on the table.'”

With regard to the Republican across-the-board tax cuts, which expire in 2010, Mr. Rangel said, “If it relates to tax cuts on 2010, I can’t say I have any great ambitions as to what I would like to see.” He added later that his position on those tax cuts would depend on “what the economy looks like and how many wars the president has gotten us into.”

Over the course of a 12-minute interview, the words “raise” and “taxes” did not once emerge joined from Mr. Rangel’s mouth. But he also made clear that he supported what he said was the president’s promise for a “revenue neutral” approach to simplifying the tax code. In this respect, he said, “You can’t simplify the tax code and say everything but taxes are on the table.” He did not elaborate.

Mr. Rangel did say that he would like to cut taxes on those in the middle class who have been hit with the new higher alternative minimum tax. How he would offset this cut, however, he did not say. One way, Mr. Rangel said, would be to make efforts to recover the billions of dollars in lost revenue the Internal Revenue Service has said are evaded or not paid annually.

As the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel will be in a position to make good on promises if political trends continue. With the scandal around the resignation of a Florida Republican, Rep. Mark Foley, over sexually explicit e-mails to teenage male pages and the worsening news from Iraq, many election analysts are now saying Democrats have a chance to retake the House.

Not all Republican insiders are as gloomy. The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, pointed out that he did not think the Foley scandal would discourage social conservatives from voting. “People who think the social conservatives will sit on their hands must think they are stupid people. But they understand the difference between Speaker Pelosi and Speaker Hastert,” he said.

When asked for his reaction to the Journal’s editorial on Mr. Rangel, Mr. Norquist said it was evidence that Mr. Rangel does not take his party’s rhetoric about winning the House seriously. “Why would someone be saying this stuff to the media now if he thought his party was going to win in November? If he waits a month and the Democrats win, he will have more than two cameras. He will have 20 cameras,” he said

Mr. Rangel, who has served in the House for 36 years, has said he will retire if Democrats do not win back the House.

While matters of war and peace are not the province of his Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel did say he still wanted “stop the war” and that he supported a national draft. “As long as we are at war, we find that wealthy, influential Americans are not putting their children on the front line. I support a draft,” he said. “It’s not just a draft for fighting wars and having youngsters to do this. It does not mean they would not be eligible for military service.”

He said, however, that his committee has little influence in this matter. As for stopping the war, he said, “I said that the Vietnam War was not ended by the executive. It was ended by the committees in Congress.”